Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-04-24
THE BABY.
A Ss.;2s OF Letters from Marion Har-
lana TO These Who Are the Mothers
OF Immortal Beings.
The Trained Nurse, Her Uses and Her
Abuses-The OdOr of Dscayed
GentiIity Often Sickening.
BY MARION HA2LANp,

!
Author of Common Sense in the Nursery" etc
Copyright, 1887, by the Author.
She is at her worse, great improve
ment upon Ssiry Camp and Betsy Prig.
The pair possessed and prosecuted and
Frustrated US until, if we brought our
lives out OF the ill-smelling prisons of
| which they were the turkeys, we thank
ed God and took courage for whatever
fate might have in ste re for US. If moth
ing else made the trained nurse
necessity the abuses of her
predecessor forced change upon
US. In the days which even physicians
winked at the profession on which resto-
ration hangs at q hundred points where
medical skill depends upon one, was in
trusted to ignorant women, always elder
Unknown to the profession as ''gren.
MES" They proWled from house to
house, as occasion called them; were ar
bitrary and sycophantic by turns, but
generally bore rule with hard hand, not
merely over the patients, but in the
households upon which they had swooped.
Traditions of their coGe that have come
down to this generation make one shud-
der. The inevitable dose of Costor oil to
the mother and sweet oil to the baby; the
ten days of caudle, cambria tea and dry
toast to the one, the drenchings of catnip
and tennel seed teas to the other; the air
less bed chamber in which Sairy swung,
like snuffy vampire, between bed and
cradle; the manifold bindings and omitted
baths; we read and hear of them as tale
of the dark places of the earth and the
habitations Of cruelty. They sent many
a mother and baby out OF the world with |
their pOW-WoW practice of drsstiCs, anO-
dYnes and starvatiOn-thOSe WitCh-like |
CrOnes who infested our fOremother's |
birth chambers!
Luckily, they were seldom summoned |
in ordinary cases of illness. Neighbor5 re-
lieved guard when the domestic force was
to nurse the COnsumptive or
fever patient. The house mother tended
her own sick faithfully, according TO her
were often few and dim. In
each family some one member usually de-
VeIOped aptness for the nursely office, and
was in great request in her community.
She picked up skill as she went alOng-a
lesson here, often gained through bitter eX-
6 casual hint there-until she
formulated system. Now and then the
foundation gave way-a rotten pier or q
sand bank caused the structure to sac.
As, for instance, when a child i'll with
measles got at cold water and drank his
I'LL, or patient, sinking in the reaction
Of fever, insisted upon having something
70 eat before n died, end got well on
beef and brandy instead Of expiring from
'urfeit.
From this primordisl chaos and contra
fiction was evolved The Trained Nurse.
Her relation to those We have sketched is 4,
hat sustained by the regular practitioner ]
% the quack who may, and does cure oc- (
,asionally, by accident. Nature caprici-
,usly siding with him.
Our nurse makes deliberate choice of {
Ter vocation, usually while young and E,
trong. 1t is not enough that she be- :
leves herself to be "ealled." The sever. |